They would keep talking.
But for now, the coffee was hot, the food was waiting, and neither of them was going anywhere.
Forty Eight
Two weeks later, Savannah realized she hadn’t checked the exits in a while.
The thought came to her halfway through the morning rundown, standing at her desk with her coffee cooling untouched beside her. She was listening, actually listening, not just waiting for her turn to speak or bracing for something to go wrong. It startled her enough that she almost missed her name.
“Sav?”
She looked up. “Yeah. Sorry.”
Harper smirked. “You good?”
“Yeah,” Savannah said, and this time it wasn’t a lie she had to convince herself of.
She scribbled a note in the margin of her planner, more out of habit than necessity, then closed it. The newsroom hummed the way it always did. Phones ringing. Producers calling out blocks. Someone was laughing too loudly near the assignment desk.
Normal.
She used to need that word like armor. Now it just felt descriptive.
Across the room, Tilly was checking their camera settings, head tilted slightly, focus complete. They glanced up when Savannah looked over and smiled. Not the careful kind. Not the kind that asked a question.
Just a smile.
Savannah felt it settle in her chest, warm and unremarkable in the best way.
They hadn’t labeled anything new in the last two weeks. They hadn’t made any big declarations or promises. They had just kept showing up. To work. To dinner. To each other.
Savannah still overthought sometimes. That hadn’t magically disappeared. But the difference was that she didn’t disappear with it anymore.
She had caught herself nearly doing it once, a few nights ago. A familiar tightening in her chest. The instinct to retreat, to cancel, to say she was tired instead of explaining why she felt off.
Instead, she had told Tilly the truth.
“I’m in my head,” she had said, standing in her kitchen with a wooden spoon in her hand.
Tilly hadn’t tried to fix it. They had just nodded. “Okay. Want company or space?”
Savannah had surprised herself with the answer.
“Company.”
And that had been it.
No spiral. No fallout. No apology tour afterward.
Just dinner, quiet, and staying.
Now, two weeks later, the absence of chaos felt like its own kind of accomplishment.
Jamie passed by her desk, paused, then doubled back.
“You’re weirdly calm today,” she said.
Savannah raised an eyebrow. “Is that an insult?”
